i see dems

i watched most of the democratic national convention this week and found i could really relate to some of the speakers.

yesterday there was a guy from indiana named barney smith who kept talking about how his job had been shipped overseas and a foreign worker was now doing it. he had the great line about how america needs elected officials who care more about the barney smiths than about smith barney. barney smith oozed middle america in his gingham print shirt, lisping slightly but with a compelling message.

another woman spoke of owning two pet stores in florida while also having a part-time job and still not being able to afford health insurance.

in years past i recall seeing and hearing similar stories from the conventions. i always thought the tellers were middle americans who lived in the heartland and who were bearing the brunt of economic downturns. i knew they were autoworkers, and farmers and from other industries which happened to be moving to india or china at the moment.

they are me now. on august 6th, i was laid-off. so when these democrats spoke of our current recession and the various policies that are either ruining america or could help us, i was even more attuned than usual if only from self interest.

much of what was put forth was rhetoric. much of that could be considered valuable rhetoric, rhetoric worth listening to, but until it is achieved it remains just rhetoric. for me, i feel like i need to fast forward by four to six years to reach a time when the economy may be ready to give me a viable job again. does that sound bleak? well, i believe things are bleak.

in fact, my favorite speech from the entire dnc was given by dennis kucinich. his was a call to action for americans to "wake up," and elect barack obama. that speech made me choke up a little bit and i guess that is because in kucinich and perhaps more importantly, in those who appreciate him and vote for him and agree with him, i recognize kindred spirits. so to hear the voice of him who knows, (to borrow from baudelaire,) screaming at the rest of us to get on board and begin to fight back against injustice is especially poignant.

i think obama will win, though i would not be shocked if i end up being wrong. if he does win the presidency, he will have to make the tough decisions that could conceivably help us get back on track in this country but it will take a considerable amount of time. in the time it takes, he is going to be forced to endure attack after attack. he will be blamed for all he is trying to fix. this next presidential term is going to be an ugly one for whoever holds the office.

it was easy to watch the dnc this week because i was sick so i had few choices for how to spend my time. on wednesday night during bill clinton's speech, my wife called me from the pharmacy where she was picking up my prescription. the doctor prescribed me 10 tablets of 75mg tamiflu, (in additon to ibuprofen for fever.) its cost, she informed me, was $85.

i thought the idea of health care insurance was to keep an illness from overly impacting one's budget but with $85 meds and $35 copays and a $5,000 yearly deductible, i see that is certainly not the case anymore. health care in this country is a joke. i am happy to hear obama and clinton talk about ensuring every child in this country has access to health care. as a first step there is certainly nothing wrong with this idea. however, the single payor system kucinich promoted in the primaries is the only plan that can fix what has gone horribly wrong.

when i left the urgent care facility late wednesday afternoon, the cashier asked me if i knew my insurance was set to expire on september 1st. yes, i was aware, i explained. i told her i was in the process of switching to my wife's insurance because i had been laid off on august 6th. she gave me my card back along with the receipt for my copay without making any eye contact.

getting laid off is a bit like catching hepatitis or leprosy. you can try to hide it but that is giving into the idea that the condition is shameful, which it is not. when you are open about it many people respond with grace and empathy.

the day i was laid off i came home and updated my resume. next, i sent an email out to virtually everyone in the address book of my home email informing them i had been laid off and asking them to keep me in mind if they knew of anything i might be the ideal match for. it was part of my three-pronged strategy for gaining employment anew: work the online job databases, leverage contacts, (nepotism,) and target desireable companies.

i received many responses to my email. most simply wished me the best of luck and said they would be on the lookout for me. some expressed some amount of shock, which was unsettling. in their tone and some of their suggestions, i could hear chicken little and i worried perhaps my sky really was falling, (is falling.)

in the early part of this decade ownership of the company i worked for changed several times, three, to be exact, in five years. in the midst of all that "change management," and as two organizations merged, the two call centers on opposite coasts had to be addressed.

in deciding what would be best for the business, three options emerged. one; contract all call center operations out to india just as our primary competitor had already done. two; direct all calls to local branches so that the guys who delivered water could deal with the needs of their customers personally. three: merge the two centers into one. while i was not involved in reviewing those options and making that decision, i was close enough to the top to have friends who informed me as to what was going on and who believed the value of keeping the call center in america with the employees under the company banner was real and so they went about making that case to the newest owners.

the decision was made to keep the call centers and even to integrate them as opposed to merging them. so it worked out that time though it did not for our competitors who worked at a call center in brea, california, which was closed.

i mention all of this because what i did not hear from the democrats was any talk about globalization. no mentions of nafta, cafta, gatt or any of the other acronyms that are all about screwing the american worker. yet, even though i am not an auto worker nor have i worked in a factory, these kind of deals mean the world to me, or, the end of the world to me.

as long as american companies are allowed to go overseas for cheaper labor, without being checked by any restriction or moral outrage, they will and in turn, guys like me will get laid off and have strain and risk added to their lives. it's unpleasant.

i suppose i don't know what to make of it. i feel like i can do anything. i think i would need some guidance and/or training for just about any job but i feel like a better prospect based on my overall insight, communication skills, adaptability and work ethic. but i have zero confidence in my ability to get anyone to believe this is true without knowing me. i just feel like they're looking at the resume and they see a void where they want to see a degree.

as the days drag on i sense my self esteem being affected. its subtle but i beat myself up a bit for not banking that degree a long time ago, for not focusing on my career and income over the last 15 years as i probably should have so that my issues would not be on such a basic level and for not being more focused on making money as a rule, if only for my family.

despite my personal concerns, i felt good about the dnc on the whole. i believed there were many good men there. i am hopeful this group will effect some change in the coming years which will positively affect people. i also hope my own prospects improve.